My Atheist Friends, Help Me Understand

I read posts here that call different things, "harmful to humanity." Others call something, "good" or "bad" or "evil."

A very simple question, who gets to decide the definition of "harmful to humanity" and what is there critieria? The same for "good," "bad," and "evil?" These are not material terms. If everything is material isn't there just "is" and not these moral declarations if one is being thoroughly atheist?

Help me understand your position so I am fair and honest about the views. Thanks.

Replies to This Discussion

RE: "If you became conscious of an intent to mow the lawn, that intent was actually formed in your brain in the preconscious mind a few seconds before that intention entered your mind."

Even considering it's source, I can't fault that reasoning, but what has that to do with free will? I can't accept - assuming that's what you're saying - that I'm instinctively hardwired to decide to mow the lawn, because in actuality, I'm instinctively hardwired to park my butt in front of the bigscreen with a bag of chips and a cold Bud and rent a sheep to take care of the lawn.

There's a lot of research on psycho/sociopathy reported on the Internet. Some of it says gray matter brain damage is genetic and white matter brain damage is learned. All of it says there is a lack of empathy, an inability to connect ethically with others. Because the "pathy" words I used above are so widely and even carelessly used, many researchers are using "anti-social personality disorder" to describe the condition.

Am I correct in concluding that your "hard-coding" is a metaphor for "entirely genetic and not at all learned"? I see the metaphor "hard-wired" often.

Am I correct in concluding that your "hard-coding" is a metaphor for "entirely genetic and not at all learned"? I see the metaphor "hard-wired" often.

That's a good point. No, I don't mean the term as literally as it's used in (say) computer hardwire. Especially when considering epigenetics, even genetically coded design often expresses in unexpected ways during development, causing phenotype variances in (say) genetic twins, and so on.

Physical brain structure even changes during the learning process, so there's not always a fine line in the hardware/software.

I think that since our brain has evolved relatively quickly and changed so much in the past few hundred thousand years that we're bound to not yet have perfectly evolved some of its rushed, less-than-perfect design. I'm saying this speculatively, not with scientific evidence.

By virtue of being human and living in a society we assign beneficial/detrimental values to things. That's just how things work and have always worked. Now, on a small scale we determine everyday what is good or bad for us as individuals. We don't need religion to tell us that drinking drano is bad or that treating another living being with respect is good. We can see the results for ourselves in our everyday lives. We also don't need the Bible to tell us that killing another person is bad, Society tells us that. Even before the Bible, societies recognized that citizens killing each other wasn't a good thing and incurred a punishment on the perpetrator.

Nor does the Bibke need to exist for us to respect our elders.. Again, the Chinese and Japanese have been respecting their elders/ancestors for centuries before the Bible written-- as have the North American Native populations.

In other words, we as Atheists don't need the Bible to provide a moral compass. Besides, the Bible didn't tell us something that societies all around the world didn't already know and have laws for..

As Kevin mentioned we are 'hard coded' for survival. We learned early on that in order to survive we had to live in groups and as a result of this, codes of conduct had to be developed/enforced in order to increase the sustainability of the group. Man's laws and the Bible are examples of this. Just rules to live by in order to survive. Sure the Bible has stories by which it attempts to pass these laws to others.. but otherwise it's really no different.

Man, by virtual of an unwritten 'contract with society', gives power to the laws which govern him. Again, the same goes for any holy book a religion follows. A follower of that religion gives power to that religion, its holy book and the tenants contained therein to govern him.

We, as Atheists, give no power to holy books so therefore we don't allow what they contain to govern our lives..Not that we need to.

Rob, "...the Chinese and Japanese have been respecting their elders/ancestors for centuries...."

Point out to a Chinese or Japanese that Western cultures long ago threw off tyranny, and then ask why their far older cultures have not yet done so.

The reply a Chinese gave me when I asked was, "Because we have been so thoroughly taught to respect our elders."

And, "...an unwritten 'contract with society', gives power to the laws...."

Some folks, psycho/sociopaths among them, live outside contracts with their societies. Since they are about one percent of people not in prison, you will probably meet a few. How will you recognize them?